


In the Valley

by mehramilo



Series: In the Valley [2]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Em-Dash Abuse, Enemies to Lovers, Finger Sucking, Flashbacks, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Voyeurism, M/M, Masturbation, Past Relationship(s), Post-The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Rough Sex, Timeline Fuckery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 19:51:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14479956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mehramilo/pseuds/mehramilo
Summary: Under orders from Emperor var Emreis, Roche travels to Vergen to find the leader of a non-human rebellion.





	In the Valley

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t a direct sequel to “Under the Stone” but a continuation of the flashback/relationship dynamic in that story. In short: By the time he leaves Flotsam, Roche has had multiple “encounters” with Iorveth and claims to regret them. Let’s just call that rest of that other fic an alternate ending or something.
> 
> This story is riddled with headcanon and other convenient nonsense. A few things of note: Per _Matters of Conscience_ , Vergen was razed prior to joining the Empire. Iorveth was present for events in _Witcher 3_ , including major quests at Kaer Morhen and Novigrad. Temeria is “free” in that it’s no longer at war, but Nilfgaard still holds most offices and occupies the palace in Vizima. (I just don’t see Emhyr walking away from all that because of a treaty.)
> 
> Translations for the mangled “Elder Speech” are included at the end.
> 
> And a warning: Writing an undercurrent of feels into this already problematic/implausible ship is my guiltiest pleasure. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Roche knows he can be a stubborn fool sometimes, but he’s smart enough to realize when he’s completely fucked.

This is one of those times.

The attack had come too fast to react: a chatter of leaves, the whoof of a loosed bowstring from the bank along the road. His had horse suddenly screamed beneath him. He’d had but a moment to look aside, to spot the arrow jutting from its flank, when the beast reared, wrenched his stirrups toward the sun, and flung him to the dirt.

He isn’t sure how long he’s laid there since, sprawled on his back under the blaring sun, somewhere in the depths of the Pontar Valley.

He tries to work an elbow beneath himself to shove upright; his chest, still clapped shut from the fall, burns as he sucks for air. His horse—he rolls his head to look for it. Nothing but black spatters of blood on the grass leading into the treeline—

—where a cluster of cloaked figures emerges with blades drawn.

Bandits, then, with traps along the road, come to cut his throat and pick his corpse. Roche scrapes his heels in the earth, tries to shove himself back, to find something to leverage against to stand—but he still can’t catch a single fucking breath. His vision contracts to dazzling pinpricks, and his legs tangle uselessly in the muck. He slumps back, exhausted.

Well, he left his best sword in his quarters in Vizima, so they’ll not get good steel off him, at least. And the Suns on his chest? The cunts could’ve bloody well had the things if they’d only asked.

A fly bumps against his sweaty temple, but he’s still too choked to summon the energy to shoo it away.

Dandelion certainly had his work cut out for him to make this end a good one.

Then, footsteps thrumming the earth; darkness blotting the underside of his lids. He blinks and finds three silhouettes looming over him, purple against the sun. One of the shadows crouches and begins tugging at his boots; another bends to his waist, slices his costrel from his belt, and shakes it near his ear, listening for the slosh of drink.

“ _Mae rhywbeth_ ,” the stranger says, handing the strap aside to his partner and pulling at Roche’s cloak to cut the clasp free.

Roche knows little of Elder Speech—only the words for _shut the fuck up_ and the sorts of curses Squirrels rattled as they died—but enough to recognize elves slipping fingers in his pouches, pawing at his swordbelt, yanking at the straps of his armour.

He’d thought he’d endured the last of this sort of indignity in Flotsam.

One elf crouches by Roche’s head, plucks a corner of his straggled chaperon from the ground, and grinds it in his fist until mud streaks down his forearm. Then, he glances aside and spots the Nilfgaardian badges affixed to Roche’s breast. “ _Ciaran_ ,” he says over his shoulder, then again, harsher this time: “ _Ciaran_.”

The one wrenching Roche’s boot grunts.

“ _Voe'rle! Nid yw'n deithiwr. Mae'n o ceas'raet_.”

The elf drops Roche’s foot, heaves himself to his feet, and stoops to inspect his face more closely. A wretchedly ugly beast with greasy braids laid along his temples—Roche flings his fist at him, but he’s still too dazed; his arm floats past his head like driftwood.

The elf bats Roche’s hand aside and snatches the emblem from his chest, rolling it in the sunlight to study it for forgery. “ _Ysgarthiad_ ,” he hisses, revealing a line of pegged teeth. “ _Fel y dywedasoch. Ni all cyffwrdd yr un hon._ ”

“Elves are said to be beautiful,” Roche snarls between breaths. “The fuck happened to you?”

That’s when they start dragging him.

 

“Vergen will receive you with all the dignity and aplomb due a lord of the Empire,” Emhyr had told him. “Nilfgaard’s vassals do not forget their duty to their benefactors. Need I remind you of yours?”

Roche concealed his fists behind the small of his back. He swallowed a mouthful of sour phlegm and said, “No, Your Majesty.”

“Then you have three days to order your affairs before embarking, as we have discussed.” Emhyr flicked two fingers, as if wafting away an unpleasant odor. “You may go.”

Instead, Roche watched Emhyr sweep a pile of letters before him, seated at the desk where Foltest had liked to take his evening drink. Standing over the man like this, Roche could see his crown through his thinning hair, as waxy and pale as a corpse fished from the river. His fingers hooked like a carrion crow’s talons as he shuffled through the parchments.

Roche thought of the trains of blue-veined marble hauled across the deserts of Zerrikania after the war, of the mausoleum stacked in Vizima’s graveyard with it—and of the yawning hall inside that held no corpse. Then, he pictured Cirilla turning rabbits on a spit somewhere in the wilds and bit back a grin.

At least he had helped wrest one thing from this cunt’s grasp.

Emhyr glanced up at him. “Were my orders unclear, Vernon?”

Roche worked his jaw as if chewing his words but didn’t respond.

Emhyr turned his gaze fully upon him, settling back in his chair to study him over steepled fingers, his mouth withering into a frown. “You think me ignorant of your history with the Elder Races, I take it?”

“No,” Roche said, then added: “Your Majesty.”

The corner of Emhyr’s mouth creased with a mirthless laugh. “You were not an unknown entity in Nilfgaard before the war,” he said. “You were named in correspondence from our allies in Dol Blathanna and abroad countless times over the years: _Glaspavienn_ , _Heliwr_ _Crevan—_ I need not repeat the cruder epithets here. But then Temerians have never learnt to speak the Elder Tongue, have they?”

Roche’s cheeks prickled. “No, Your Majesty.”

“Of course not. What use could swineherds have for such knowledge? You must trust me, then, when I say that none of them flatter you.” Emhyr scraped his chair back from the desk and stood, turning his back on Roche to look out the window behind. Shards of moonlight, stained blue and red and green by the coloured glass, glinted on the white planes of his face. Outside, across the black courtyard, a mote of flame danced across the darkness: a torch held aloft by a night watchman as he paced the terrace outside Foltest’s quarters.

 _The Emperor_ _’s quarters_. Still had to correct himself after so long.

“The Aen Seidhe and dwarves of Vergen do not forget their duty,” Emhyr continued, “but have grown restless in the years since unification, emboldened by the absence of true enemies. They take for granted the freedom of governance and safety from human interference Nilfgaard has bestowed upon them. I have even received reports of delinquents in the city who curse my name—sheep, all of them, lead to treason by some dwarf or elf they call their leader. I mean to uncover this dissident before I must put down a rebellion again. A costly venture, as you are well aware.”

“Very wise, Your Majesty,” Roche said, glancing aside. “But why send another—” he almost said _rebel_ but recovered “—an outsider for this?”

“You were Intelligence, were you not? Or am I mistaking you for another of Foltest’s villains?”

Roche narrowed his eyes. “I was, Your Majesty.”

“Then it would seem your skills are well suited for this, wouldn’t you agree? But it doesn’t matter. Your career has provided you the opportunity to serve other purposes than simple gossipmongering, Vernon.” Emhyr pinned Roche with his gaze. “I mean, also, to remind the Elder Races of the cruelty that awaits them should they throw off Nilfgaard’s protection. To remind them of the beasts the Empire has tamed on their behalf.”

Roche felt as if his guts had drained from him and percolated into the rug underfoot.

Emhyr turned to face him with his mouth bowed into a sneer. “You will travel to Vergen and report any suspicious activity you discover to me immediately. And you will be seen wearing the Suns proudly amongst our Elder allies. Is that understood?”

Rage chattered in Roche’s bones, but he said only: “I understand.”

Emhyr’s brow shifted: the same expectant expression Foltest’s kennelmaster had worn after clipping a disobedient bitch on the muzzle.

“Your Majesty,” Roche spat.

Emhyr snorted in disgust and sank behind the desk again. “That will be all, Vernon. I tire of your company, and you have business to attend.”

Roche dipped his chin against his sternum hard enough to click his teeth and staggered for the door.

“Oh, and Vernon?”

Roche clapped a hand against the jamb to catch himself from barreling through to the hall.

“See that you groom yourself before you depart. Your beard is not the fashion in the North any longer.”

 

“Welcome to Vergen,” the dwarf says, stumped in the mouth of the towering arch like a broken tooth. “More of a ploughin’ ruin than a whore’s cunt, but a loyal friend to Nilfgaard, you’ll find.”

Roche, too busy scuffing dirt from his clothes for gravitas, drones: “On behalf of Emhyr var Emreis, White Flame—”

“Yeah, yeah.” The dwarf chops his hand to silence him. “We got the load of it from the rest of your folk. Showed up looking as pleased as a whelp at teat earlier. You lot get separated on the road?”

Roche plucks a clod of grass from behind his ear and sneers as he examines it. “A fucking kind way to put it.” The elves had dragged and dumped him here at the foot of the gate while the guards along the wall above chittered with laughter.

“It’s festival season, lad; plenty of city folk on the road. Should’ve expected a few pickers to come nosing about in search of new boots.” The dwarf’s mouth flickers into a smile; he forces it flat again before continuing: “A lass in Rhundurin will shake that coat out for you for three coppers—and your own hide, too, if ye pay her but a wee bit more. But fair warning to ye: I cannae promise ye’ll find the same hospitality elsewhere in the city, Black One.”

Roche cranes to peer up at the scorched crown overhead, the crumbling parapets, the palisades stubbling the carved hills. A grey soot hisses across the flagstones, stirred by the breeze: bones, charred by fire, ground to dust under Nilfgaardian boots when they stormed the gate. “Didn’t roll over and let yourselves get ploughed by Emhyr’s cock,” he says, his head swimming as he drops his gaze to meet the dwarf’s again. “You were made an example for the next who thought to refuse the shriveled bastard.”

The dwarf snorts but eyes him warily, as if suspicious this is some test for treason.

“I’m Temerian,” Roche says and shrugs. “The fall of any free city’s a godsdamn shame.”

“A Temerian with the bloody Suns pinned on his tits? A strange breed, that.” The dwarf narrows his eyes, squinting into the sun to study Roche’s face above, his chaperon—then fixes on his sternum, on the graven lilies laid atop there. “Well, bugger me sideways with a spear,” he growls, shifting a paw to the axe slung at his side. “Aye, I know ye.”

Then, he hurls a gob of phlegm at Roche’s feet.

“I remember Mahakam, Commander.”

Roche sighs. If he’s honest, he can’t recall much of the Hills, only the way Foltest’s eyes had shone when he reported their surrender. “A different time,” he says, touching the empty loop on his belt where they’d stripped his blade. “I serve at the Emperor’s pleasure now.”

“As do I,” the dwarf says. “The only reason ye still have yer rotten melon on your neck, my friend.” He turns his back on Roche and tosses over his shoulder: “Follow me before the elves come back to collect your bloody trews off you, too.”

 

Roche staggers on the cratered road as he follows the dwarf into the city, wending between tumbledown carts and shattered stalls and chunks of rubble. Splintered blades glimmer as a cloud slips past and strums the rays of sunlight. A breeze huffs from the narrow lanes alongside, as wet and rank as a belch.

“We couldnae bury the dragon after the battle,” the dwarf explains. “Stinks to shite whenever the wind turns.”

He leads Roche to a central plaza, to a staircase carved into a chasm leading to an axe-scarred door. “The Cauldron,” he says, jerking his head toward the charred signboard by the landing dangling from a single rusted chain. “Cannae much make out her tits now, but weren’t much to look at ‘fore this, anyway. Ye’ll be lodging here.”

Roche turns in place to scan the ring of stone walls towering above, the pocked facades and jagged terraces cut into the face of the mountain. No leaded windowpanes or even parchment here: The windows are black and hollow, open to the cold, staring blindly back at him. “And these are Vergen’s finest, I imagine,” he drawls. Might not freeze his cock off tucked down beneath the earth, at least.

“Aye, that it is.” The dwarf shoots a stream of spit between his teeth. “Nilfgaard don’t ploughin’ like it, they can come build new atop that which they smashed.”

Ves would jab him and call him a cunt if she were here. Roche sighs and says, “No, I—thank you.” The words creak in his throat after long disuse.

“Right.” The dwarf swipes his knuckle under his nose.

Roche grimaces but decides there is no coming back from this. He doesn’t bother attempting a goodbye before beginning the descent to the tavern door.

He’s three steps down before he hears: “Commander.”

He looks back to find the dwarf peering down his gnarled nose at him with a curious expression.

“Ye knew Geralt of Rivia once, did ye not?”

Roche nods.

After a pause, the dwarf asks: “And how is the pasty bastard these days?”

It’s been a while since he last saw Geralt, but he imagines neither he nor Yennifer have suffered much but hangovers since the Hunt was defeated. “Alive,” he says. “Sleeps in a feather bed each night with a woman beside him. Drinks enough to pickle a normal man’s innards.”

The dwarf’s beard twitches, then bounces with a laugh. “Naught more a man can ask for these days, I reckon. When next ye see him, tell him he ought to pry himself off that witch’s teat long enough to say hullo to old Yarpen, will ye?”

“I will.”

“Festival starts tomorrow,” Yarpen adds. “An excuse to drink until your balls slosh when you stand. Enjoy it—need a good word or ten to take back to the capital with ye about Vergen. Cannae have folk think we’re naught but a slop of sad cunts here, y’know.”

Roche blinks away a spray of dirt kicked loose from above by Yarpen’s nervous shifting. “I will,” he says, then waits for whatever else the dwarf’s working himself up to say.

Yarpen pauses, rolling his jaw as if milling flour. “And Commander,” he finally says, “pay no mind t’aught ye might hear in the streets. Rebellions, war—you know how men talk shite when in their cups. Nothing to tickle Emhyr’s ears with. We know our place in the Empire; we want no more trouble from ye Black Ones.”

Roche nods once but clatters downstairs before he must swear to anything more.

 

The Cauldron’s bookmaker scans Roche from his uncracked boots to the neat stitches around his collar and sneers, “ _You_?”

“Who do you think, my ploughing mother?” Roche flings a purse at him and shrugs out of his doublet. This, he tosses over after a moment’s consideration too. The puffed shoulders made him look as broad as a rock troll, anyway. He steps into the circle and says, “Next fight’s against me.”

He shoves his shirtsleeves over his elbows and watches men palm coins across: all bets against him. He knows he looks like easy pickings now, like some soft lord who caked stinking powder in his pits and sucked the pulp of exotic fruits from under his nails every supper. The fucking court, the appearance Roche had been ordered to maintain for it. What use would he be, Emhyr had said, if he were too slovenly to show before guests?

He still wears the chain Foltest had laid upon him, though, leaden and dark amongst the Suns. The only act of rebellion he dares anymore.

His opponent crosses into the ring—a mulish oaf with glassy eyes—and hauls his fists up before him. Roche almost feels sorry for this one. He has no idea Roche fought in the wars, that he’d once brawled with Geralt—a Witcher, for fuck’s sake—and managed to throw him. Or that he’d spent years pilfering scraps from the forge, scraping them sharp against the cobbles, and tucking them up his sleeves before scuffling with the other urchins in the warrens.

This isn’t a fair fight at all.

He grins.

The man’s first punch clips his cheek and fans sweat onto the crowd behind. The next, his left ear—didn’t get his guard back up in time.

Feels bloody good, though. Roche sucks a breath in through his ringing nose and can’t help but laugh.

He fells his opponent with a jab to the throat, leaving him retching in a corner. He cups his winnings in a palm still calloused from the hilt of a sword and even smiles as the bookie fondles his emptied purse. Let them see he’s kept all his teeth and stew over that one, also.

He tosses his doublet over his shoulder and wades through the press of bodies toward the bar. Has to bend double to order beneath the dwarf-height lintel and peers down on a cluster of greasy heads when he stands again.

It had intrigued Foltest, he remembers: this street boy built like a pike, jutting over the others when lined atop the scaffold, waiting his turn to have his ear clipped for thieving. When Foltest had summoned him to ask who his father had been to make him so large, Roche had snapped, “The fuck am I supposed to know?” and earned a mailed crack on the head from a guard.

But Foltest had only laughed. _As brazen as you are tall_ , he’d said. _You_ _’ll make an excellent soldier._

“Vernon?”

He stops short. A man who had been trailing in his wake through the crowd jars into him and shoves past with a curse, slopping his drink over the rim of his tankard onto his hand. Roche turns. Around the table beside him: a cluster of staring eyes, winking and arachnid in the dark.

“ _Mae yna_ _’r bu’rac._ ” The speaker leans into a stripe of torchlight, laughing as he elbows his compatriot, and Roche recognizes him: Jan, a Nilfgaardian, one of the emissaries sent to monitor him while let off his lead. The one who’d met him at Vizima’s gate from the wrong side—from inside Foltest’s palace—on the day Emhyr signed the armistice.

“What has taken you so long?” And the man beside him: Roderick, another one of Emhyr’s arsekissers by trade. Bulging chin cut by a cleft that resembles a poorly shorn ballsack. The man eyes the tumble of drained cups around them and adds, “We were searching for you, of course.”

Jan frowns. “You were sent here to extend His Majesty’s favour to our allies, _not_ to box them about the ears like a drunkard.”

“I hear there was a misunderstanding on the road,” Roderick says, mouth pursed over piggish laughter. “Why did you not tell the elves you were travelling under the Emperor’s protection? They were Vergeni, you know this?”

Roche ducks his head and studies the blood and beer creeping between his knuckles, the gloss of sweat shining on his forearms. He thinks of slapping the table aside and bashing Roderick’s skull against the stone panel behind him.

But he can’t. So much as a sour word from him and Emhyr would strip what few offices remained in Northern hands. Maybe even put more of Roche’s compatriots to the sword lest he inspire them to further aggressions. With Ves still in Vizima, the Black Ones wouldn’t have to look far to acquire the means to heel him again.

His compliance in return for Temeria, they’d agreed. Maybe not _free_ Temeria, but breathing, at least.

And what right does a whore have to pride once the coin’s been paid?

“Never occurred to me,” Roche says to Roderick, trying to flatten the sarcasm from his tone. “I’m just not the seasoned diplomat you are.”

Roderick chortles into his cup at this, but Jan studies him coolly over the rim of his. “We will be watching you,” he finally says, setting it aside to massage his sword hand.

Roche shoves past before he does something foolish.

He shoulders through the door to his rented room and flings it shut behind him. He slams back against the hewn wood; splinters pick at him through his shirt as he braces against it.

He chugs his drink to the dregs. It slips down his throat like a stream of bile, and he must swallow a gag.

 

Roche listens to the sounds of men in the beds alongside his: the rustle of straw as one tosses, the rasp of nails as another scratches at bites in a dream. He drags a hand onto his abdomen, cups it, and stills. His face burns, tight, as if he’s stared into the sun all afternoon.

He’s hard, godsdamn it, nagged from sleep by the fucking thing though he’s sore and exhausted.

He rolls his head on the pillow to scan the room for the glimmer of watchful eyes.

Nothing but darkness stares back into him. As near to privacy as he’ll ever get in shared quarters like this.

And why the fuck not, anyway? He needs some damn relief after such a shitty day.

He slides his hand across his stomach and grasps himself. He slits his eyes and glowers at the murky ceiling above; his lips slouch apart with a huff. He strokes himself once—a horrifically messy sound trapped in these stone walls—then again when no one alerts to the noise.

Then he’s jerking his cock, lips curled under his teeth, grimly efficient.

A shuffle through images of the barracks for something to come to: snatches of bodies being helped into maille, men he’d startled naked from bed when they were meant to be on duty. The ones who used to sit around the fire and complain their wives wouldn’t suck them—maybe just once they’d slip into his office and spread on his desk and beg him to do it, instead.

Or even—he shivers—the time he had sailed to Flotsam, he and Geralt and Triss, the night sky spread violet on the water, and the cabin door had slivered open with the shifting of the boat, and he had hesitated just outside while pacing—someone had to keep watch for Squirrels along the shore—and had peered into the stripe of ruddy light along the jamb to watch—a habit of intelligence-gathering, nothing more—as Geralt ploughed her over the bed, his broad back to Roche, striped crimson to the hips from when his guards had lashed him—

But he shoves that thought away. Always felt grimy to use it for this.

Instead, spliced to this memory of Geralt, a thread to Kaer Morhen, to the night he’d turned aside into that dark hall, the way his gut twisted as he drew close to the door at the end….

 

If anyone had asked him what he was doing in that wing of the castle, he would’ve said _assessing supplies_ or _surveying defenses_ or maybe just _get to work, Ves, can you not see all these shitty blades in need of sharpening_?

Instead, locked in the doorway with a hand clamped to either side, he watched Iorveth work in his quarters. The elf was spread on the furs before the fire, propped against his pack, feet pressed against the hearth to fold his legs before him. Beside him, a line of arrow shafts, spread in a half-sun; one, laid along his thigh to brace it as he wound a spool around the fletching. The thread, coated, smelling of honeycomb: a sheet of summer laid over the stink of rot. Iorveth’s fingers shone with the flesh-warmed wax from it.

Absurdly, Roche felt his ears flush.

“I’d heard you were dead,” he finally said and advanced a step into the room.

The spears of Iorveth’s wet hair dragged aslant as he glanced over his shoulder. “Is that what your _an'givare_ tell you? Poorly trained by their commander, apparently.” He turned back to his work in dismissal.

Roche had never claimed to be good at this sort of thing.

He pressed onward, past the yawning shelves and the stale pallet slumped against the wall. Stopped beside Iorveth, just inside the splash of firelight, and crossed his arms. “Word in Novigrad is you took an arrow to the throat, drowned in your own blood in a stinking gutter. Sounded like a fitting end for a whoreson like you.”

Iorveth snorted. “I’d heard similar of you: Vernon Roche, scourge of elves, cut down in the fields of Dol Blathanna. An amusing turnabout, you have to admit.” He lolled his head back on his shoulders to look Roche in the eye. “You can imagine my disappointment to learn it wasn’t true.”

Standing over Iorveth like this, as the elf had done to him in Flotsam, Roche felt a thrill trickle through him. Standing close enough to chop the heel of his boot into Iorveth’s teeth, to pin him beneath before he could so much as think of a blade.

For the first time, he understood something of the origin of Iorveth’s obsession with him.

He shook his head to scatter this thought. Iorveth’s cloak and coat, hung from the mantle to dry: Roche swiped a crust of snow from them just to give his loose hands some purpose. “Why’ve you come here?” he said. “Didn’t think Squirrels gave a fuck about anyone but their own.”

Iorveth made the sort of noise used to chide a stupid boy. “We Aen Seidhe repay our debts in kind, as your men have learnt at the end of our swords. Gwynbleidd has bled for my people, and so I come to spill mine in return.”

New sweat prickled the back of Roche’s neck. He remembered Geralt’s tales of Vergen and Saskia, of the elf’s gawky service to her. The Witcher had meant to humour him with the telling of it; he’d only managed to gurgle a single sick laugh in response.

“Oh, I’ve heard the story,” Roche snapped. “Seven dwarves and the ploughing Maiden of Aedirn—or does she go by a new title these days? Surely, you’ve managed to fuck her by now.”

Iorveth fumbled the knot he’d been winding. He cut his gaze to Roche with a scum of ice over his expression, a flicker of something hot beneath the surface.

Alone in his quarters, he’d stripped his headscarf and left it draped over the back of a chair, twisting in a chill draft, grimy scarlet and dripping like something intestinal. This wasn’t the first time Roche had seen the mangled side of his face, but he still felt a knife of pleasure at taking the secret off him anew.

After an all-too telling silence, Roche leered and said: “So you _haven_ _’t_ ploughed her, then. Seems the starry-eyed girl has some sense after all.”

Iorveth’s face paled to the clammy sheen of milk in the darkness. He picked at a loop of thread with trembling fingers, pulled it loose, and reseated it between the same vanes as before. Didn’t even notice his mistake.

“Vergen is fallen,” he finally said and turned his face aside. “Speak no more of it, Roche.”

Roche turned over this revelation, this unguarded weakness he’d stumbled upon, hefted its weight as if it were a new blade—then deflated as he watched Iorveth slump. He’d sat like this once himself, alone in a barn in the outskirts of Redania, stewing in the stench of shit and blood and putrid hay, elbowing away a sow snuffling at his wounds through the slats of its pen. Had franticly palmed the damp from his cheeks when Ves came to find him. Yet one more indignity Emhyr would have to pay for one day.

He hadn’t received word of the other provinces yet—had only sent scouts into the ruins of Temeria in search of recruits—but should’ve known the Black Ones wouldn’t be content feeding from but one trough in the North.

He said, “I mean to kill every last cunt wearing the Suns,” and felt it was enough of an apology.

Sleet chimed against the windowpanes in the silence that followed. They regarded one another with lips pursed, as if they both had discovered a strange taste in their mouths.

Then, Iorveth seemed to remember himself. He smoothed his expression and tossed the arrow he’d been fletching in the pile behind, laced his fingers atop his crown, drew his abdomen taut in a stretch. A stripe of tan flesh slipped bare above the waist of his leggings. “Why have you come here, Roche?” he said and slouched a thigh aside.

Roche pinned his gaze to the wall and glared at the whorls of silvered grime there. “Here to help Geralt, same as you ploughing are.”

Iorveth dropped a hand to his abdomen as if to cover himself but just curled his fingers against his skin there. “And you mean to do that in my quarters? Come to sweep and change the bedding like a sweet little chambermaid, have you? You lack the charms for it, Roche.”

Roche had spent all afternoon chipping at the frozen soil with a shitty shovel, digging trenches around the castle’s perimeter. His hands throbbed along the head and heart lines when he gripped them.

Iorveth grinned. “Or do you still think to claim a bounty on my head after all this time? You’ll find few _dh_ _’oine_ with coin to spare for your petty grudge nowadays.”

Roche thought of the day he’d fucked that smug mouth sloppy, the day he’d learnt the empty socket still produced tears. A spike of desire hammered through to the bone.

“Radovid would take your hide,” he finally croaked, burnt-faced and rattling. “I could die a rich man, you know.”

Iorveth chuffed a laugh at him. “An intelligence officer who can’t even maintain bearing. And you were Foltest’s finest? No wonder you’re losing your war.” He dragged the lines of Roche’s chest with a narrow eye, quirked a brow when he noticed he wore no maille under his gambeson. He cut a glance at Roche’s crotch before coming back to his inflamed face and said: “Come now, Roche. Do you think I’m a fool?”

Roche swallowed a grimace and shook his head.

Iorveth had studied the way Roche fought, had learnt his weaknesses in order to best him. He knew of the knee Roche had taken a blow to in Mahakam—the right—and the way it still creaked ominously in the cold. He flashed out a hand, caught Roche around the back of the joint before he could stagger out of his reach, yanked—

Roche crumpled, cracked against the stone floor with both knees, sucked a gasp through his teeth. Tried to hunch over the sudden shot of pain, but Iorveth had him by the chin, his hand a hot collar pressing him back, wrenching his face aside to expose his neck.

A breath shaped against the side of his throat: “Still too proud to ask this favour of me, are you?” Iorveth’s teeth nicked him as he spoke.

“Is that what you call it?” Roche’s stubble grated Iorveth’s hand as he twisted to face him. “You always were a shitty liar.” He shoved against Iorveth and tried to catch his mouth with his own.

But Iorveth held him in place, rocking uselessly in his grip with mouth gaped.

“No, Roche,” he scolded. “You must tell me what you want, first.” He smoothed his thumb across Roche’s lower lip, dragged it down as if to inspect the cavity behind for rot—then forced his finger past Roche’s teeth.

Arousal plucked the sinews along Roche’s thighs; his muscles wound taut at the invasive touch. He closed around Iorveth on instinct, huffing urgent breaths through his nose as he sucked, pulling the taste of warm beeswax from his skin, faintly sweet, the tang of a cut across the knuckle. Couldn’t help a soft sticky gasp as Iorveth drew his thumb free—and fed his index finger in instead, then the one beside, watching Roche’s mouth work on him with a wet film over his eye.

Roche followed his fingers when he withdrew again, tongue lolling like some idiot beast. Iorveth cupped his free hand around the back of his neck and dragged him forward through the slump. Roche clutched at him as he landed against his chest, turned his face aside to suck at his neck, raked his hands along his ribs, up his spine, his tunic hissing under his nails: some coarse fabric woven from nettles cut from the riverbed, sighing loose the smell of distant forests as Roche crushed it in his fists and dragged up the hem.

A pressure slipped along his waist underneath his coat, arced behind to the small of his back: Iorveth’s hand, still curled around the wet taken from his tongue, shoved beneath the waist of his trousers. Then, the cleft of his ass knuckled apart, a pressure against his hole—

Roche gave a broken _huh_ as a finger slipped inside.

Iorveth bit behind Roche’s jaw—now two fingers, both heat-slick from his mouth, worked just past the rim—and scuffed off his chaperon. He scraped his nails along the shaved scalp above Roche’s neck, then threaded his fingers in the longer hair at top, jerked his skull back with it—

“Beg,” Iorveth hissed, pulling breaths through bared teeth as he studied Roche’s upturned face.

But Roche was hard, _stupid_ hard, the sort that left his head light and his tongue too leaden to form words.

So Iorveth shoved his fingers inside his ass past the knuckle, caught on the dry bend—hurt him on purpose, the prick—and ground his mouth against Roche’s to drag the breath off his tongue just as he winced.

Anything to get a rise out of him, as it always had been.

Roche shoved a hand between to find Iorveth’s balls and grasped him roughly until he withdrew. “Is this why your kind don’t reproduce?” he snarled. “You’re all this godsdamn terrible at it?”

Iorveth splayed his fingers around the back of his skull and shoved him into a deeper kiss to silence him.

Roche’s growl, smeared against the elf’s mouth: “Just fuck me.”

But he huffed a cruel laugh through his nose and ignored this.

Now, both hands clawing at Iorveth’s leggings, ripping the laces loose. His cock dripped a line of pre-come as Roche pulled it free and shoved it through his fist to try to persuade him.

Iorveth tipped into his frantic strokes but offered nothing more than light strokes around his hole.

Roche wrenched a handful of the elf’s hair in his fist and throttled it. “Fuck me, damn it,” he rasped. When he still made no move, Roche clenched his eyes shut and worked the jagged word out from his gut: “ _Please._ ”

And, finally, Iorveth peeled his own tunic free and flung it aside, shoved Roche’s gambeson off his shoulders—

Roche only managed to free one arm from a sleeve before Iorveth forced him over. He folded onto his knees, clapping a cloud of dust from the fur rug as he caught his fall with both hands. His medallion slung forward and scudded the icy chain along the back of his neck.

“ _Gwared_ _’en_.” Iorveth tugged at the waist of Roche’s trousers, then leant away to dig through his pack.

Roche dropped onto his forearms, then turned his face aside to take his weight on his chest as he reached back to undo his own laces. Spine sloped, arse jutted in the air like a cheap girl at the Passiflora. Somewhere behind him: the chink of glassware, the hiss of calloused palms swirled together. Roche’s face flared with humiliation as he bared himself to the thighs. Then, a palmful of wet heat cupped against him: oil, streaming down the cleft of his ass, dripping off his balls, and beading on the rug underneath.

Say what they would about the son of a bitch, he at least warmed it beforehand.

Two fingers to start this time, soon three, working an aching stretch, something akin to relief. Heavy strokes along the wall, drawing a tingling along his cock—this close to coming already, for fuck’s sake, like some ploughing spotty boy with his first hard-on—

Then, a startling emptiness as Iorveth pulled out of him.

Roche ground an aggravated moan in his teeth as he listened to the elf slicking himself somewhere close, felt the press of his cock into his crevice. Tufts of the fur rug bowed forward and back as he panted. But Iorveth didn’t enter him yet, just rutted into that wet space, sliding against his hole each time he pushed through.

Roche, teased past endurance, cratered into desperation. He shoved back up onto his hands and snapped, “Give me your fucking cock already.”

And, for once in his life, Iorveth obeyed.

Shoved forward by the thrust, Roche’s fingers gnarled as his palms scuttered along the floor. He had to tongue the roof of his mouth to hold back a yelp.

Iorveth clapped a fan of heat on Roche’s ass and bent forward to mouth at his shoulder. “Too much for you, am I?” he said and gripped his flesh to pull him back into place.

“You—” Roche’s breath rattled in his throat as he sank back onto him “—haven’t near enough, elf.”

Then Iorveth’s sharp breaths, the wet chop of his thighs against the back of his own. A mindless fire swept through Roche, sent him slack; his head drooped. He looked down his cave-pale chest, through his own thighs, and watched himself get fucked from behind. He thought of the secret ache he would carry inside him tomorrow—he, the leader of free Temeria, the man who could rip fear through lines of soldiers with a single command, now owned by a rotten Squirrel—and his shame charred into a blacker, filthier pleasure than ever before. He spilt a strand of pre-come onto the rug, and, distantly, he wondered if the Witchers even came to this part of Kaer Morhen anymore, if Lambert would scuff at the stain with his boot and declare _at least someone got laid in this shithole once._

Iorveth grasped him by the hips, hauled him back into line from a slump, and drove against that madness-making spot inside his ass with every thrust, again and again and again, until Roche realized he was making the same hideous sounds men made when dying of gut wounds but couldn’t control himself any longer.

A needling flush crept from chest to jaw; his heartbeat thudded through his face; he clutched helpless fists on either side of his narrowing vision; his balls gripped against him in cold fear of what was about to cut loose within him—

And then he was coming, fucking coming, grinding his teeth against the near unbearable crush of it, grunting through each shot onto the floor—

And Iorveth barreled into him, bottomed out with a snarl—

And Roche drifted back into himself, blinking stupidly as Iorveth came inside him, feeling as if he had just spilt through one of those fucking portals Geralt always bitched about into some other world.

A goddamn wretched world, at that. Roche sprawled prone on that beastly rug, sticky and sore.

Iorveth scooped against his back to drop a kiss on him and withdrew.

Roche rolled over and lay there shivering like strummed wires as Iorveth crossed to the hearth to fish his pipe from his jacket. Of course. For all his chatter about being some higher species, the elf never seemed to pass up such primitive pleasures as these afterwards.

He stood there before the fire, his back to Roche, sweat-slick and glistening, something otherworldly in silhouette. Swept broad as he bent to the flames, pinched narrow at the hips as he stood again. He blew a tendril of rank smoke, tossed the flame-curled stick he’d used to light the bowl onto the logs, and turned.

Iorveth noticed he’d been staring.

An absurd moment of averting his gaze, still tangled in his own sodden clothes and sloppy between his thighs. Roche dragged his trousers over the mess with a cringe, sat up, and swiped the beads of sweat clustered along his lip. Dust clotted in the back of his throat. He coughed.

 _Fuck_.

This was the son of a bitch who had killed the miller in Lobinden, who had toed his corpse into the river to sweep it away just so his family would have no body to bury. The one who had pinked his own flesh with countless blades and arrows outside Flotsam. He still bore the scars of their previous encounters across his shoulders.

And now a prickling stamp in the shape of Iorveth’s hand on his ass from this one.

What the _fuck_ was he doing here again?

Iorveth’s shadow seeped across the floor as he drew before him. Roche glanced up and found him grinning around the bit clamped in his teeth.

He drawled, “I think a ‘thank you’ would be appropriate,” and offered a hand.

“Fuck you.” Roche smacked it aside and pushed onto his feet alone.

The corners of Iorveth’s lips wilted into a frown. He worked the stem aside as if he meant to say something more—but then just snorted and shoved past Roche hard enough to stagger him.

And so it always went for him. If there were things one was meant to say to a lover afterwards, Roche didn’t know them. He’d never heard them from anyone, and whores would’ve mocked him for any attempt at fondness.

What do you say to an enemy who just fucked a hurt into your innards, anyway?

Roche knew he should return to his quarters where Ves waited for him—as she always did on the eve of battle—with a skin of vodka and a stack of cards to while their sleepless night away together. Instead, he stared into the flames, listening to Iorveth plash in the washbasin and smooth water over his skin. These vulnerable sounds, achingly intimate. The sort of sounds he’d make stripped bare, bathing in a green river outside his tent, cupping sun-bright streams against his chest, between those legs, along his neck.

Fuck, he’d spent so long in that damn cave outside Oxenfurt, tugging himself raw to the thought of this bizarre cunt who seemed to want to pound him senseless before he throttled him. This bastard, too clever by half, who understood him as no other did, who read his weaknesses as no other did, who had shoved Roche’s mouth onto his cock outside the elven baths once and sent him back into town with sticky trousers without ever touching him. This beautiful, strange beast who’d shocked still when Roche slapped him during a brawl, who’d been hard by the time he’d wrestled him to the ground, who’d come clawing and desperate as Roche pinned him and stroked.

Roche realized he was hard again.

_Fuck._

How the fuck was he going to explain showing up for battle already bruised and limping as he walked?

And Iorveth’s mouth, scrubbed red on his stubble—did he really think he could pawn that off on mere coincidence again?

But he sighed, squared his shoulders, and strode across the darkness.

Ves had learnt not to expect answers from him, anyway.

 

Iorveth had been bent over when Roche shoved up behind, unfolded him with a hand cupped around his throat, and dragged him back against him. Felt a complaint burr under his fingers at this, but only just. Leggings still undone—Roche tipped his head over the elf’s shoulder to watch as he shoved them free again. And he held him like this, draped loose along his chest like some wounded thing, and fucked against him, stroking the elf’s cock around front with a hand still wet with his own spend. He’d kissed him along his jaw, his ear, into the line of dark hair tucked behind. And Iorveth’s thighs—fuck, his whole body—he’d _trembled_ —

Roche digs his knuckles against his lips to muffle the pathetic sound as he comes.

A moment of stillness, clenching his jaw as a greasy loneliness seeps through him. Then, he swipes himself clean with the linens and flings them aside. This mattress reeks of rancid wool and stale farts, and he’ll have to give the innkeep extra coin tomorrow to fit new bedding on it, he imagines. He punches it once, harder than necessary to reshape it.

He rolls prone and closes his eyes and begins to drift, wondering distantly where Iorveth’s wandered to these days. If he’s even still alive. If he still wears that grubby scarf; if he still scrubs his teeth with sage to clean them.

Not that Squirrels posed a threat any longer, but would’ve been nice to know what the son of a bitch was up to, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

>  _i._  
>  “There’s something.”
> 
> “Stop! He’s not a traveler. He’s from the Empire.”
> 
> “Shit, it’s as you say. We can’t kill this one.”
> 
>  _ii._  
>  “Blue Ape, Fox Hunter….”
> 
>  _v._  
>  “There’s the bumpkin.”
> 
>  _vii._  
>  “Remove them.”


End file.
